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Three reasons why Awami League lost in Sylhet city polls

A member of BGB remains vigilant near a polling centre during the Sylhet city polls on Monday, July 30, 2018 Mahmud Hossain Opu/Dhaka Tribune

BNP leader Ariful Haque Chowdhury is set to return to the office of the mayor

After a tight contest with Awami League’s Badar Uddin Ahmed Kamran, BNP leader Ariful Haque Chowdhury is clearly on the verge of winning the Sylhet City Corporation election and returning to the office of the mayor.

The Dhaka Tribune, after analysing the overall situation, polls results and talking to different quarters, has found that a number of factors played into Ariful’s favour in the city polls held Monday.

They are – Ariful’s immense popularity for his development activities in the city and promising electoral manifesto; strong commitment to BNP men and people’s sympathy over BNP chief Khaleda Zia’s incarceration; and an internal feud among local Awami League leaders were the reasons Kamran got left behind.

Unofficial results published Monday night revealed that Ariful, with 90,496 votes in 132 out of 134 polling centres, was leading by 4,626 votes while Kamran trained behind, bagging 85,870 votes.

The Awami League leader did not raise any complaints of vote rigging throughout the voting hours and stressed that the polling was free and fair, but at the end of Monday alleged that irregularities had taken place.

Before the vote, many had assumed that Jamaat-e-Islami-backed independent candidate Ehsanul Mahbub Zubair, who ended up bagging 10,024 votes, will put an adverse impact on Ariful’s vote bank. But that prediction proved wrong.

“Although Ariiful was in jail for over two years, the development projects he implemented had resolved several burning issues of the city—which may have inspired the voters to take his side,” Faruk said.

He added that despite being in jail for more than half of his tenure as mayor, Ariful worked closely to resolve issues that were not even addressed by Kamran.